Internet and the Workplace

Abstract

The introduction of computer capability reconstructed the workplace and upended assumptions about how a workplace operates in terms of efficiency and network communications. With the widespread use of Internet capabilities, businesses began to struggle with policies to direct, contain, and even control employees' access to the Internet. Companies recognize that technology that allows networks to operate with unprecedented efficiency and cost-effectiveness can also be a significant distraction to employees.

Overview

When computer technology first redefined the workplace in the 1980s, its impact was felt almost entirely in network operation. Computers in the workplace spiked efficiency in record keeping, financial data archiving, project schedules, pay distribution, and, perhaps most dramatically, intradepartmental communications. File cabinets, telephones, binders, face-to-face meetings, real-time conferences, and even paper forms were used less and less as companies quickly grew dependent on the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of computers in the workplace. Within a decade, such digital technology was routinely installed in businesses in virtually all ranges of productivity, market reach, and employee population. Time and space in a network were repurposed—and employees, as they themselves grew accustomed to the operations of digital technology and as information technology divisions expanded their influence in developing network operations, computers quickly became indispensable elements of any business that intended to grow. But employees accessed computer terminals at their desks or in their cubicles only to complete tasks and to keep network operations fluid and dynamic. However, by the early 1990s, human resource studies began to chart a new phenomenon of workers finding themselves suddenly with non-specific downtime during the work day; that is, given the efficiency of the computer systems, workers completed their assigned tasks more quickly, leaving gaps in the workday.

However, with the introduction of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s and its rapid development into a global information reservoir that was easily accessed by computer without charge, the workplace underwent yet another revolutionary change. Employees could access a variety of websites and take advantage of a range of computerized programs easily and quickly. With a simple click, employees could check electronic mail, could send instant messages, could upload and exchange photos, could pay bills, and with the evolution of social media, could connect with literally hundreds of friends and exchange the news of the day.

In addition, employees could access more public sites largely for entertainment: online games, shopping sites, auction networks, pop culture sites, news and weather feeds, live streams of sporting events, movie and music sites, adult sites, and even share personal videos literally with the world through YouTube. Or, should they prefer, workers could simply use the reach of the Internet and its scope of millions of sites to surf, randomly checking into any information that might come to mind. The boom in the Internet, coupled with the widespread presence of computer technology in the workplace, quickly created a potentially untenable dilemma: Given that computers were essential to an enterprise's operations, and given that the exponentially expanding services of the Internet made it indispensable to businesses of any size, how were businesses to use that technology while at the same time managing their employees' access to it as a way to prevent the abuse of the Internet during the workday?

Applications

As a first premise in the emerging debate over the Internet in the workplace, network operations executives pointed out that computer hardware and software were, in fact, the property of the network, that the computers available at individual workers' stations were there only to facilitate network operations, communications, and data resourcing—not entertain employees. Within the digital workplace, there can be no presumption of privacy. Anyone's computer activities are justifiably (and legally) part of the businesses' records. The Internet's considerable digital power was there to streamline operations, maintain critical pipelines of information, and make communications between departments and even between outside businesses that relied on the network's goods or services through video conferencing, email exchanges, and document exchanges. Internet access at work was a privilege, not a right. Thus, whatever use of the company's hardware necessarily reflected on that business, every computer operation represented that network. Even a single-word reply to a friend's email request to, say, have lunch constituted network correspondence. Whatever messages were sent, whatever sites were accessed, and whatever images were downloaded or distributed, all represented network correspondence.

Of course, such a sweeping premise, on its face logical and fair, could be applied in a network only unevenly. After all, given that the Internet itself was founded on the idea of universal accessibility and user-friendly protocols, workers found any lag time in the workday an opportunity to check personal email or send instant messages or attend to their social media accounts. Company computers could be used to access virtually any site. Workers could shop, pay bills, monitor private stock purchases, catch up on the news and weather, download music, and even watch entire movies. The Internet made fuzzy the traditional boundary between personal and professional. Although employees recognized the inappropriateness of logging onto certain websites—pornography, gambling, and escort services, for instance—distributing vacation photos, making dinner reservations, purchasing a pair of shoes, watching a YouTube video of, say, a cat playing a piano, or checking for updates on sports scores did not appear to be an excessive problem.

Workers easily rationalized their behavior (a phenomenon known as neutralization), considering that online activity was conducted in relatively brief periods of time (most purchasing transactions, for instance, could be done in less than a minute); the company did not compensate the worker sufficiently and online activity was seen as a justified, if unauthorized, perk. After all, everyone in the office complex gave over some time during the workday to internet activity; the assigned work for the day had been completed, and the mind needed to be engaged, or risk boredom; or workers could multitask, watch the news and review financial reports, for instance, or listen to music and complete required forms. In short, employees justified internet activity as a justified reward (Yellowlees, 2007).

Companies did not see unauthorized worker internet activity in quite the same light. Network executives raised five principal concerns about internet use in the workplace. First, the widespread and unchecked worker access to internet sites overloaded the bandwidth of the company's network system. Audio files, video files, photos, and the array of forms and paperwork could quickly clog up the network's information pipelines, requiring the company to invest in increasingly larger network capacities while getting no additional revenue from that expansion—and that on top of whatever expansion the business might pursue as its operations expanded. Second, human resource departments and legal departments raised concerns over tricky liability issues should workers access illegal sites during the workday or send inappropriate messages using businesses' computers.

Internet activity in the workplace raised the potential of sending messages, jokes, and stories that could be construed as sexual harassment, racism, or even threats of violence. If workers used onsite computers, then the business itself would be legally liable for any damages or criminal charges that might result from workers' internet activity. Third, unrestricted internet access created a sense of vulnerability among workers and even impacted the reputation of the network to protect its workers from harassment or inappropriate material circulated within a network (McEwen 2012).

Companies eager to attract the best and the brightest of the digital native generation, recognized that a network's reputation was quickly established through social media and blogs and that it was in the long-term interest of a company to maintain the integrity and professionalism of the workplace. The workplace was for business. Workers surfing the Internet, circulating questionable materials, or updating social media sites created an unprofessional atmosphere where employees were lax and supervisors indifferent. Fourth, the random accessing of potentially hundreds, even thousands, of workers laid the network computer system exposed to a variety of viruses and spyware, introduced even inadvertently by worker surfing, thus creating untenable issues of security breaches, interruption of network operations, and even the loss of vital network data and the compromising of highly sensitive information archives about employees and about network projects.

Finally, perhaps most important for the network, internet use in the workplace cost the company literally inestimable losses in productivity. As Grodzinsky and Gumbus found in 2005, because internet activity became so widespread and because internet use was accomplished through so many different digital avenues, hard data on lost productivity can only be estimated—but organizations lost billions in hours of worker productivity to workday internet use and abuse (given the proliferation of handheld computer systems such as smartphones, there is a body of research that suggests internet abuse bears a striking similarity to the complex psychological profile of addictions such as alcohol and drugs). Indeed, per research conducted by Davis, Flett, and Besser in 2002, given that internet abuse might be classified as an addiction, legal departments and human resources departments advocated ascertaining the level of internet dependency as part of the interview/ screening process for new hires, particularly if that hire was born after 1985, among the so-called digital natives. The phenomenon is known as cyberslacking and, as its name implies, it covers the often random browsing done by workers during the normal operations hours of a company, that is, while on the clock (Lim, 2002). A 2016 Pew Research poll found that, of those surveyed, 34 percent of people used social media at work to take a mental break from their responsibilities ("Social Media and the Workplace," 2016).

In the 2020s, and especially following the COVID-19 pandemic that saw the proliferation of work from home policies that remained even after the lockdowns had been lifted, employers were in the unique position of no longer being able to physically monitor employees at their workstations. If employees were using company-issued computers and logged into a network, their internet use could still be monitored. However, many used personal computers to work and companies lost control over completely managing their employees' time. Software programs that monitor employees and their internet use even remotely became a popular tool for employers.

Viewpoints

Although actual implementation inevitably differs from business to business, network to network, there is a consensus that network operations can no longer risk operating without an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), a policy that must be applied across the board, governing the internet use of any employee from the mail room to the boardroom. Any policy instituted for the good of the network operations is best implemented by the cooperation of critical departments as well as representatives of the workforce itself. In drawing up an AUP, networks draw on human resource department personnel, information technology support engineers, as well as supervisors, and the full range of network echelon employees, thus making internet use a company-wide concern.

Of course, companies cannot even try to simply outlaw internet use. Such draconian measures not only drive off valued employees but also create enormous frustrations and discontent among workers—plus, such a sweeping agenda is virtually impossible from a technology standpoint, given the proliferation of wireless technologies. Rather, companies install into their networks filtering software that blocks employee access to known inappropriate sites and monitors the time spent engaged in internet activities in a log that is both accurate and consistently applied. Companies then know the total time employees spend checking personal emails or texting, or surfing, as well as where such internet activity takes place. Of course, the company makes public its use of the filtering software to encourage transparency and to avoid engendering paranoia. Filtering software is often presented as a strategy for high-tech protection for employees and network operations.

Use within a Set Policy. Wisely, though, companies allow unrestricted personal Internet use as an element of job perks—setting aside breaks and even extending lunches to allow for regulated and metered Internet use. Companies explain in a written policy statement the difference between the appropriate and inappropriate personal time on the Internet during the workday, clearly indicate that the network system relies on filtering software, and spell out acceptable boundaries for Internet use while at the same time setting exact expectations for job performance and productivity as a way to provide workers with structured workdays and to discourage the sense of unregulated downtime on the company clock. Allowing personal Internet use is a strategy for maximizing worker morale (and provides a selling point for recruiting new employees) and instills in workers, particularly those within the demographic of the tech-savvy, a reassuring feeling that the company trusts them to both do their job and stay connected—in short, trust they are capable of responsibly balancing their professional and private lives.

With a set policy, a company can deal swiftly, personally, and with complete transparency with any violations. In conjunction with human resources and legal counsel, any company can set up a standard level of reprimand from the first violation to ensure the employees are treated fairly and consistently. Because workers know that a company has the legal right to monitor computer use onsite, the policy is grounded in adequate forewarning. Increases in violations move the worker from an informal discussion to a written reprimand to reassignment, unpaid leave, and even termination. But the policy allows for a consistent system, and each step leaves a clear paper trail to avoid misunderstanding or the appearance of impropriety on the part of the company.

With a careful policy in place that clearly defines boundaries between the personal and the professional, by introducing a specific internet use policy to all incoming employees, making that policy readily available in print and electronically, setting reasonable expectations for productivity, and periodically reviewing (and revising as fit) the company's internet policy, a company can create an effective and efficient workplace in which employees make use of the resources available online and as well feel trusted and part of a team. In 2019, 79 percent of the workforce had access to the Internet, and between 30 to 40 percent of Internet use in the workplace is not actually job-related; moreover, social media distracted millennial workers for as many as 140 hours each year (Patrick, 2023; Petrosyan, 2022; and Craver, 2016). Thus, it is in the best interest of an efficient and cost-effective network to define policies in which both employers and employees are satisfied with effective and productive internet usage in the workplace. By the beginning of the 2020s, a time when more and more employees were also working remotely rather than in company offices and cyberattacks had become increasingly sophisticated as well as prevalent, the debate over the best policy (restrictive, looser, somewhere in between) to adopt regarding workplace internet use continued, as some research argued that employees could experience mental and productivity benefits from taking breaks from their regular work to engage in such activities as internet surfing; at the same time, others noted that while certain internet activities, such as watching meditation videos, could help to reset the brain for focused work, others, such as checking social media, could provide some mental relief but might also make it more difficult for the brain to eventually refocus, potentially harming productivity in the long run. Research also included studies of links between internet use unrelated to work and employee satisfaction, and some experts emphasized the need for employers to assess what leads employees to engage in this activity at work instead of simply implementing reactionary use policies (Stokel-Walker, 2020).

Terms & Concepts

Acceptable Use Policy (AUP): A clear directive or policy statement drawn up by a company's human resources department its information technology department, and its legal counsel, of what the company deems appropriate levels of personal Internet use during the workday.

Cyberslacking: The general trolling of websites and personal social media outlets by a worker at work during the workday.

Net-centric: Adjective used to describe a business that depends on the Internet not only for its internal operations but also for its successful outreach into the business community interested in its goods or services.

Neutralization: The psychological process among workers who use the Internet at work to rationalize that use as a perk or as compensation to which they are entitled.

Spyware: Any computer software program, most often imported into a company network, that would allow another entity to access otherwise secure information without that company knowing it.

Bibliography

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Suggested Reading

Cohen, Adam I. (2013). Social media: Legal risk and corporation policy. Alphen, Netherlands: AspenLaw.

Grover, S. L. (2014). Fair workplace regulation of Internet usage. Asia Pacific Management Review, 19, 99–115. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=95746882&site=ehost-live

Guerin, L. (2013). Smart policies for workplace technology: Email, blogs, cell phones & more. Berkeley, CA: NOLO Press.

Mika, K. (2014). The benefit of adopting comprehensive standards of monitoring employee technology use in the workplace. Cornell HR Review, 1–7. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from EBSCO Online Database Business Source Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=97718707&site=ehost-live

Snow, C. B. (2014). To snoop or not to snoop? Legal considerations under Utah's Internet Employment Privacy Act. Utah Bar Journal, 27, 20–24. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=96126484&site=ehost-live

Weckert, J. (2005). Electronic monitoring in the workplace: Controversies and solutions. Hershey, PA: Idea Group.

What to say when .. (2016). Communication Briefings, 35(1), 5. Retrieved December 28, 2016, from EBSCO online database Business Source Ultimate. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bsu&AN=111922027&site=ehost-live&scope=site